Carolyn Rudolph: What If Gratitude Is The Secret Ingredient

A legendary Santa Cruz noodle spot isn’t just built on recipes. It’s built on how you treat people, how you source your food, and what you believe a meal is actually for. We sit down with Carolyn Rudolph, the owner of Charlie Hong Kong, and follow the path from the Summer of Love and early organic food movement to a restaurant that many locals treat like an institution. Along the way, we talk about soil health, real nourishment, and why the “farm to table” idea should come with actual gratitude for the workers and systems we rarely see. 

Carolyn shares what it takes to keep an organic restaurant in Santa Cruz consistent while food costs rise and the pressure to raise prices never really goes away. We get into the way Charlie Hong Kong designs food for digestion and nutrition, why “how you eat” matters as much as what you eat, and how slowing down can change the whole experience of a meal. There’s also a deep look at culture and leadership: putting employees first, building a workplace people return to, and keeping that spirit alive through COVID and constant change. 

The conversation turns personal as Carolyn opens up about her husband’s Parkinson’s disease, deep brain stimulation, and what they’ve learned about dopamine, movement, dancing in the kitchen, and the healing power of love and connection. We wrap with a simple but challenging question that stays with you: who are the invisible people at your table, and how often do you thank them? 

If this hit home, subscribe, share it with a Santa Cruz friend, and leave a review so more people find the show. What’s one small act of gratitude you can practice today?

Transcript

Welcome And Cast Intros

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Ready.

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Welcome to the On the Coast Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello, hello. This is Karina Kelson. Normally I am sitting in a chair without a microphone, but Brandy is sick today, so you're stuck with me. You're my right.

SPEAKER_04 0:16

We brought her in. Karina's actually gonna be on the mic. Finally gets a microphone. Exactly. Leveled up.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Little breaking news here. I mean, she jumped on the mic last week. This is I think this is this. We created a monster on the old Think Local First podcast, where I think she had enough listen to the guys talk for about 40 minutes and then just sat down on the couch and took it over.

SPEAKER_04 0:37

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what happened.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

And I jumped right in. So I'm sorry. You do do the to the right and we'll get everybody introduced. Kina, my fault. Got excited.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

No, I actually also want to shout out that I have headphones now, too, you guys. I haven't been able to hear what's going on. I just listen in the corner.

SPEAKER_05 0:53

It feels pretty good.

SPEAKER_04 0:54

This is your voice now. Ryan. Yep. Yes. So I have Ryan here. Ryan Buckwell with a cross-country mortgage. And Jerry Seegers with Seagars Insurance.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I also want to say that you guys never introduce Ryan.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

That's right. So that we have humble, quiet, Ed McMahon, date myself there a little bit. I know what my job is here. My job is to work these buttons, be very quiet. Brian Upton, Santa Cruz Vives magazine. Thank you, though, Karina. Brandy's never giving Brandy's never giving me that opportunity in 19 episodes. Yeah, well, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

I'm throwing it in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

I love it.

Sunny California And Third Spaces

SPEAKER_00 1:32

So, Brian, this past weekend we had the opening of Sunny California. How was that?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

And we're here in, I think overall, from what we expected, the investment in this property, his ambitions for this space, super well received by the community. You know, he's got 10,000 square feet here. We'll probably get into that as far as you know some of the talking about the you know market in town and investments in town and people doing business. We've got a great guest today. But I think from his ambition of what he sees this place being, you know, between the retail, the surf, the art gallery, the event space, which is, you know, co-working space. The big thing there is by June 1st, that will be, I think in this part of town, and I think in Santa Cruz, it'll be the nicest co-working space when he debuts that in town, possibly, you know, because it's gonna be combined with a surf club where the membership will get you board storage, they're gonna have an attendant. So if you come out of the water, boards washed up, wetsuits taken care of, you can go right to work. A lot of cool things that he's doing there. Uh, memberships come with like some free lessons if you're just getting started. Uh, but all the regular bells and whistles of a pretty rad co-working space is gonna be sort of have a little slack channel within the coworkers so people can network and hire within the group. And there's a lot of good co-working spaces in town, but not a lot of them that are connected where you can get your board and walk down the street and get some of the best surfing in the world.

SPEAKER_05 2:54

And also the location, right? All of them are downtown. That's it. Like this is right here where you want to be. Go grab a verve, go surf, yeah, get some good food.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah, he's gonna have a couple three showers out back. He's gonna have a changing room, he's gonna have the co-working space, super vibey. Um, he's also gonna have the room back there, the sliding glass door, large room. It's gonna be sort of a meditation studio, zero gravity chairs, so people can kind of like the whole balance of what a day should be. You know, you'll get coffee service from up front to the back, just order it up and they'll bring it back. So elevated concept. But mostly the heart of this place is that he wants to, you know, create a world-class surf shop and moto. And you can see it walking around here. He wants to have 60-day rotating art galleries, celebrate local artists, kind of keep it mostly in California, California Source Products, California artists, and really kind of supporting that's the name behind Sunny. But I think it was a great kickoff Friday and Saturday with the gallery opening with, you know, Sean Barney Barron Art. Amazing if you knew him, amazing if you grew up here. People know the name, but to see his artwork that you've seen, you know, from friends like Nelly, and you've seen it in backs of garages, backs of cars, things like that, to see it appraised at 13, 18, 23,000 by professional appraisers, it's the one thing we always kind of knew about Barney is he's an artist. Yeah, he was special. He was very special, but it's nice to, in a lot of ways, you know, great artists sometimes their value goes up when they're not here anymore. That's the sad part about it, is and I think, you know, or to be recognized, to have, you know, somebody come in, curate it, see the strokes from when he was 12 years old up to before he passed, how far he'd elevated his art, and you can see sort of that go. So wildly successful, you know, for Sonny, you know, and wildly successful as far as a kickoff to kind of like in the community really kind of wrap their arms around him.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

That's incredible. If you haven't been to the store yet, the store is awesome, and everything behind it has a story. So I'd really encourage people to come in here and engage with the employees here. Yeah. Because just learning about everything is awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:58

The other thing I'm impressed at is this whole time we've been here, every week we come, it's more and more like a flagship store. Yeah. Like it just keeps expanding, like right on schedule. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

It's so impressive how much it's expanding. Every single time we're here, it's different.

SPEAKER_05 5:14

Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Walked in today and there's a full coffee bar.

unknown 5:16

Right.

SPEAKER_05 5:17

Pretty awesome. Denim section over here. I mean, it's just like beautifully presented. It's really well done.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

And even the place we're sitting right now is being so cool about it for Vibes. We've got 15 local podcasts, and I think we're gathering them all here because he's really committed to this beginnings of a studio. Soundproof the studio, got a producer desk over there, comfy chairs on each side, so we can have more and more open conversation. As you guys know, this is Vibes is a perfect partner with Sonny, just as far as that community sort of like commitment or commitment to nonprofits. You know, one of every five podcasts is a nonprofit. Just to have a space for like that, for them here to come in, hit record button, and walk out. It's it's Santa Cruz needs something like this. Um, I think we need more of these. I think they're kind of the word right now is sort of third spaces. Yep. You know, we talked about it, I think, where you're doing the business, and as you're doing the business, you're sort of baking in community, good intentions, and human

Meeting Charlie Hong Kong’s Owner

SPEAKER_01 6:11

connection.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

I think that is a fabulous segue to introduce our guests.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

I think so too.

SPEAKER_04 6:16

Exactly. Talking about a future legendary spot, and we're gonna talk to you about definitely a legendary spot. So, Brina.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

I have the honor of introducing my dear friend Carolyn, the owner of Charlie Hong Kong. Carolyn, welcome.

SPEAKER_06 6:29

Thank you. I love that you call me a dear friend. That makes my heart so happy. Of course.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

I have the privilege of running their social media page. Oh, amazing. And over the past few months, I have really just dove into the experience of being a Charlie Hong Kong staff employee, and it is so much fun. It is actually, sorry, Dad, one of my favorite jobs. Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Oh boy, here we go. Competition.

SPEAKER_04 6:55

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

She's really talking about the culture over there at Charlie Hong Kong. I don't know why she talks about the culture over there so much. But, you know, as far as like it's a great lead-in, and I think it's best, you know, sometimes in these conversations, you know, to work it backwards a little bit. I think we all sort of, I mean this in the best way. We take Charlie Hong Kong a little bit for granted now, you know, on a local level. And I mean this in the most positive way. Like it feels like an institution, it feels like a give and right, but it's still a business. It's hard to keep, you know, basically pivoting, moving with the economy, moving with generations, things like that. So I personally, because of the family I'm in, can't take it for granted because it's worshipped land over there. But I think for the for the listeners of this podcast, kind of rewind us a little bit. Tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us about like, you know, and the we can always get to Charlie Hong Kong, but I'm always interested a lot of times, like who you are and how we got to Charlie Hong Kong, and then we'll take it from there.

SPEAKER_06 7:49

Well, I don't, since I'm old, there's a lot to go back.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

That's fine. We got time.

SPEAKER_06 7:53

I moved to California from New York. I was a teacher because I was interested in a particular kind of teaching. And darn, it turned out to be the summer of love. And I turned into I turned into a hippie. Every day I think the flower on my cheek, made little bracelets, and San Francisco handed them out to people. And then I found this community of uh hippie parents, and I got to be a teacher there, and it was amazing. And what I found out was this whole health food movement, organic and soil. I just like went, oh my gosh. I mean, my family ate sort of something. My generation was a lot of releasing the woman from the kitchen, so a lot of frozen veggies and meat, meat and uh casseroles. Frozen veggies in plastic dropped in boiling water, yeah. And pickles. We had pickles and and bagels. And I just got so passionate about it. I wanted to learn, and I fell in love with soil, and I'd take the kids out and we'd go talk to the worms and thank them for their hard work, and I'm still like that. And so when I met my husband, he wanted to do his own business, and he ended up working for 25 years in the corporate world.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 9:10

If you remember a company named Nosebagels, I do.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 9:13

He opened all the nose bagel stores in the Bay Area, and then we were transferred up there, and he worked at the first computer company called Computer Land. We went to Australia. So we did a lot of moving around with, but still, there's this, I have this obsession about learning food is nourishment. And but learning more and more. And and my one of my sons will tell you when he was eight, I made an I was like a vegetarian mom, which nobody was yet.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

And I made him wasn't particularly cool right then.

SPEAKER_06 9:45

Uh yeah. And it looked like, especially we were living in a rinda, which is a kind of conservative place back then. I served them bagels and they went, these are weird donuts. Why aren't they sweet? Yeah. Okay. He it was so I served it, it looked just like chocolate pudding, but it was made from tofu, silken tofu and carob. And he said, This is the worst day of my life. I feel betrayed. I have been betrayed by you. I'll never be able to trust your food again. Now he's our manager. So good. Anyway, so eventually what happened, if you want the whole story of it. So my husband got to a point where he was done and he was ready and I'm ready to do our own thing. And it was gonna be around food. And my husband worked in was a professional like skier, and he opened North Star there's he did their food service, and he fell in love with that. And he thought maybe someday he'd be involved in that. And so we were finally at the point we're gonna do this.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 10:53

And not really knowing what we're doing, but we were just traveling, we were missing California so much. Right. We were living in on Bainbridge Island across from Seattle, beautiful place. I went on what I call my menopausal vision quest. I was just missing California so much, camping down the coast, and I arrived like in Davenport area, and the farm feels just like my heart just went, oh yes. This is nourishment. I'm all about nourishment. Yeah, this is nourishment. I just felt so at home. And it was before cell phones, but somehow I communicated with my husband. I don't remember what we did.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

I don't know how he did that either.

SPEAKER_06 11:35

But he said, I want you to check this place out. Because Charlie Deal was a Santa Cruz guy, self-made chef, opened Oswell's as well. He was at an event and he catered it, and the person from Noah's had sold Noah's. He didn't have, you know, he was done.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 11:54

And he was so excited about the food that he thought, hey, let's do this. So he sponsored Charlie to open this in this old 1950, well, originally it was a 1950s ice cream stand, soft served ice cream, and then it was Wiener World or something.

SPEAKER_04 12:12

Wiener Works, I remember. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Wiener Works is better than Wiener World.

unknown 12:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Just from a marketing and branding standpoint.

SPEAKER_06 12:21

But so after Dan Alper from Charlie from Noah's Bagel went, wait, why am I doing this? I never have to work again. Why did I get wanted to get my husband involved, bring him back in? But so he said, Carolyn, you gotta go check this place out. So I go over to there, I pull in, I go in, I introduce myself to Charlie, I see it, and I go, There used to be a payphone under the big oak tree.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 12:50

Is this too much?

SPEAKER_03 12:51

No, God no. No, there's a payphones?

SPEAKER_06 12:54

I tell kids that I say, check it out on Google, pay phone. It's a little glass box. I called him and I said, I found our business. This is it. We we will transform this. And we of course did things to make it. I'm like so passionate about providing nourishment for people and supporting our the what I call the absolute noble work of people who work the field.

Organic Food And Farmworker Respect

SPEAKER_06 13:20

I mean, I get emotional about it because they are so underrecognized. And this is my every year we go, we go through one ton of organic chart a month. And every year, because it's the quantity, we go and bring them lunch so they can see what we do with their entire hour.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

That's pretty cool. The end product.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

It is pretty incredible to see how much vegetables are in their walk-in fridge. You walk in and it's just like rows and rows of boxes, and it they're just like full of the biggest carrots and cabbage and diecon that you have ever seen in your life. I had a diecon in my hand and it was longer than my arm, which is absolutely insane.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

It's like the white character.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

And just the colors, I imagine. Just the colors and the gorgeous. But the thing that lingers for me is when you say that, is like I'm obsessed with like, you know, species and culture and how we are who we are. And we're never too far away. You know, there's a lot of bells and whists around ears, but we are at heart hunters-gatherers. And farm to table is a very kitschy word right now that means an elevated experience. But in the essence of growing up in, you know, my family were farmers in Watsonville, and growing up in this area as a kid, you it's, you know, this is it's just literally, you know, this all the way down I-5. You know, there's just we provide food for the world here. But the farm to table one is is whatever it says on the package, and I believe in organic and all those ones, but it's all farm to table. We're not out gathering. People are gathering for us and bringing us food. And it's in all the variations it's been, even in this kind of fast-paced world we live in, pre-packaged, all of these things. We'll get into the organic conversation, but there is a semblance of uh we don't stop, we're not thankful of that. You know, we're not thankful the fact that, you know, there was a period of time where our whole cycle was sleeping, hunting, gathering, reproducing, sleeping, hunting, gathering, reproducing. And so I think this part of it right now, we take the gathering tremendously for granted, you know, as far as the gathering it's done for us at our convenience to break bread and have dinners with our family.

SPEAKER_06 15:23

So I don't consider us farm to table. And the reason why I used to say we're really a health food restaurant disguised, we're really a health and wellness center disguised as a restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

I love it. That's really good.

SPEAKER_06 15:40

And and the thing that was really important for me, and you probably know this, I wanted to make sure that Latinos were welcome at our restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 15:48

Because there's a dividing line where they don't feel welcome.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

100%.

SPEAKER_06 15:52

And that has happened, and I'm so grateful for that. And it was really important to my husband. He said, when I do my own business, it's going to be based on kindness and fun.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

You can really feel that when you walk into Charlie Hong Kong. It's just everyone there is so happy to be involved, and it's a com community space, and they're it's the only place I've ever gone where the person at two different tables are talking across and they're talking together. And it's really just a collaborative experience.

SPEAKER_06 16:24

I don't really think of us as a restaurant. I know we are. I think of all that land as sacred and we need to protect it. And I try to call attention to people. I I talk to UC students, they're disconnected, they don't even know what's going on. And I've been engaged in transitioning the farms near schools uh to organic because of the pesticide issue, and I'm very involved in that as well. And the fact that I ask people, why do you eat? And people don't know. It's really the I I was a teacher a long time, so the teacher in me is always coming out with people. And people look at me, you know that look people give to an old lady when they ask a question that they think is, what?

SPEAKER_01 17:09

What does that old lady want for me? I've I've got a question. I've got a question for you then. Uh-oh. You know it's coming. Why do you eat?

SPEAKER_06 17:19

To provide nourishment for our bodies.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

It's a good answer. That's great. It's not what I was gonna say. Pretty scientific. I was gonna say because I was bored. You know, it's like no, but it is so true. And my wife's a health education manager for Sutter Health, and a lot of it is diet, you know, it's it's that it's changed so much even over her career, but particularly the last five or ten years, which is health education for the history of the planet, and I think it's been kind of a reactive state. And now they're switching it to more of a proactive state. What are you putting in your body? What are you feeding your body? What's the balance of, you know, and then, you know, as we always say in this thing, not to get political, then they flip the triangle on us as far as the food pyramid and and things get crazy. But you know, I do agree with you that that it is, you know, it's it's the water, you know, how we nourish our bodies is is is the the most essential, simplest thing we can do, but we we overprocess and overcomplicate it, or what's your take?

Mindful Eating And Gratitude Practice

SPEAKER_06 18:14

Well, here's the thing it's not just what you eat, it's very important how you eat. And they've discovered I I'm always taking classes and studying because I'm so passionate about how to do that. I even put a little prayer on the tables that's just five lines with gratitude to those who harvested our food, those who prepared it, just to take a moment to slow down. And it turns out if you slow down and if you're in a state of gratitude, you absorb more nutrition.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

So true.

SPEAKER_06 18:44

It makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

So you're saying grab the chopsticks.

unknown 18:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Slow down.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

It does slower we use them, we use chopsticks almost so much at home for alternate foods because I do feel like it does slow me down a little bit. You know, it's like I'm I'm good with them, but it's impossible to shovel in a lot of ways unless you're doing the bowl to mouth. But it's um it does in our world slow slows you down a little bit, you know.

SPEAKER_05 19:07

Yeah.

Rising Costs And Keeping It Affordable

SPEAKER_05 19:08

So how challenging has it been for you guys to keep? I mean, for what I see, you keep quality products on hand all the time. Your recipes never change for, you know, the expensive food that you're buying. And you you have a standard that you constantly keep. I mean, stuff it's not cheap to buy organic and high-quality foods. How has that been for you guys to get through that time?

SPEAKER_06 19:33

I've been accused of magical thinking. My husband is my husband looks at something that's called a spreadsheet. I always say to him, What is it? And what is it telling you? It's a story. I hope it has a happy ending. It is a challenge. And it's become I when we started out, I think it was minimum wage is six dollars and thirty-four cents. Wow. But what's interesting, nobody had a problem finding housing.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Right.

SPEAKER_06 20:05

That was never an issue. Right. Now and they deserve to be and and I remember what people weren't working two jobs. Right. And the qual our biggest challenge right now is the price of food. And we have such huge portions, and I'm always I don't know if I should say this. I hope my husband's not listening. Um my husband's wonderful, but he is, I don't want to raise the prices.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

You say that or he does?

SPEAKER_06 20:32

I do.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Yeah. No, I can see it'll be painful in your particular business with how connected you are from that affordable plate to the people that want the health that you dharmas are in that category of like some people that just made an effort so much earlier than everybody else. And I'm not saying that's the model, but you do, you, you're gonna go there, likely gonna leave with leftovers. And it's one of the healthier meals you can have on the on the planet. So it's got to be painful for you when you raise prices even a little bit.

SPEAKER_06 21:02

Our controller, for that's her job. Plus, she's from the Bronx. I don't know if you know what that means, but anyway, she's tough.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

She ain't soft, she ain't soft, is what you're saying. She won't break someone's leg.

SPEAKER_06 21:15

You're not a nonprofit. Exactly. She's a controller. There used to be a man who came in with his wife. She was beautiful, and turned out she had advanced Alzheimer's. He would be there first thing when we opened up. She wouldn't, she would get too agitated. The only place she was comfortable was Charlie Hong Kong. So he'd come in the morning with his newspaper, and she would say, and I have so many stories like that. When we open in the morning, it's a lot of seniors who might live alone. And this way you have a so it's not like a restaurant where someone you have to leave. And I mean, people stay there hours. I don't, I mean, is it okay to say it's okay?

SPEAKER_01 21:56

It's okay. I'll be honest, you know my favorite things to do here. And this is uh what year did it open? I forget now.

SPEAKER_06 22:02

98.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yeah, 98. But my one of my favorite things to do as a grown adult when we go is sometimes we're on our way somewhere and we're dressed to the nines. And one of our favorite things to do, because it feels like we're in another city, is go into Charlie Hong Kong's and get our noodles dressed for knowing our friends are going to all these other places, and we're on our way there, you know, and and go in there and sit down, and you do feel not all the time, but if I'm on my normal day in my shorts, it's just noodles at Charlie's and it's doing its thing. But if you go in there as dressed up as you can be, and the best one is I think one night we ran into, and we're 56, but we ran into a bunch of kids on prom in there. I mean, and that's got to just make your heart. I'm talking 12, 14 kids, and and it was the most amazing thing because it wasn't open one clearly when I was in high school in the 20s, but it was the it was beautiful to see that, those kids in their gowns. So talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_06 22:58

So one day I'm pulling up to Charlie Hawkeye, and there's a woman on our roof in a wedding gown, and her husband and a toxic or the man next to her in a tuxedo. What what they had their first date. And why our manager thought that was a good idea is another conversation. But um they had their first date there, and so they thought that would be an appropriate thing for them to do.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Did I tell you Jerry does insurance? Yeah, I'm writing this down on the control.

SPEAKER_06 23:27

But we but I I go up and talk to everyone there. And we had we just had a post of prom night because the guy had a shirt and a tie out of it. Just the best. But we had a noodle party for babies. Uh I'll often have parties for kids because the teacher in me loves doing that and I know how to do it. And almost all of the parents had been eating at Charlie Hongkong since they were kids.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Yeah. Yeah. And now the kids are grabbing it, putting it on their head, and throwing it everywhere. Yeah. I got us off track because I wanted you to finish because I think you were on a good path there and kind of can stay there because I think it's good for the public to hear and clips and things like that. It's like your emotional journey when you sort of see the invoice for the for the you know, the organics and how hard you're trying, and then the floating spreadsheet that's over there over your head. When it comes that time, you're you have to do it to keep the doors open. Talk about that emotional kind of like journey and and how does it feel interacting with the customers when you you have to do that? Because I think that's meaningful.

Employees First Culture That Sticks

SPEAKER_06 24:29

Well, I just keep thinking, when we started our business. Now, my husband's corporate trained.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 24:36

I'm not. I was a teacher. And I said to him in the very beginning, when we do our business, it's when he worked, it was money first, profit first, profit second, and profit third. Yeah. And it doesn't matter how you get to show that profit. You show profit. I said, we're not going to do our business that way.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 24:56

We're going to do our business. Number one is our employees. They are our jewels, they are our treasure, our product. And the profit will come out of that. And if it doesn't, we're doing something wrong.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Kareem, you get that vibe over there behind the scenes? Absolutely. So talk about like the employees, like, because you're sort of a shadow on the wall. As a social media manager, you're capturing the they know you're there, but if you're doing it right, sometimes you're not. You're kind of what's your vibe, like from the back of the house forward?

SPEAKER_00 25:27

It's incredible. The very first day I walked in, I walked up and I was just out the window and I was like, hi, I'm here to meet Carolyn. They opened up their door to me. They said, Come on in, here's our names. We're just so happy you're here. This is such a fun place to work. Let us know if you need anything at all. Let us know if you want to try anything off the menu. Here's what our favorite things off the menu are, and just started chit-chatting with me from the get-go. Every single time I walk in, I have stories from all the employees of being like, Hey, you should post about this because we just had these people come in for prom, or we're doing this special, or this guy has been here for 15 years. It's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Just talk to him. Every single person is just incredible and just really wanting to work there, which I haven't seen very often. It's really hard.

SPEAKER_05 26:14

I think it says a lot about your culture and how you run things. I mean, I can tell you a little bit from my past. I was a very type A boss. I would read all the outgoing emails, and if they weren't right, you're writing them again. And somewhere along my midlife crisis, I realized that life is not worth doing that. I'm I'm ruining relationships. I'm not getting reward daily out of my staff. And now we're like family, and I'm understanding of mistakes, and I know they're doing their best. And our culture shifted because of that. They all have my back. They never used to have my back. And that's what I see with what you're saying is you run this business with love, and they feel that love, and they're reciprocating that to everybody that comes in.

SPEAKER_06 27:02

Thank you so much. We'll often have high school kids work there, go off to college, and then they'll come back for a time and work at work there again. So amazing. And our cooks are there from the beginning. They just stay.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

But there's a part here where it's the I think sometimes it could be maddening. I always assume business owners or even employees or somebody, maybe somebody's in a management position. They don't all have to be business owners, but there's the thing where you have this beautiful intention, you have this spirit of how you're going to do it. But then he usually asks this question like, how do you translate that in either writing or training or working? Because getting that ethos, because you have it, you had the moment in Davenport, this is your baby, and you see it. But how do you over however many, you know, I imagine on the payroll over that whole time, it's been 200 something employees, whatever, maybe more on the payroll. How do you restart and bring that into a new employee? How do you translate that?

SPEAKER_06 27:57

Well, one of the challenges was COVID. Because we used to have regular meetings, we'd bring in a sp you know, consultants sometimes that would do fun games. We literally had tables of all our employees translate English and Spanish. And they created it.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_06 28:19

Love, commitment. This is what they created. This is what our culture is. But then COVID happened.

SPEAKER_03 28:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 28:28

And we were just ready to do something called online ordering. Have you heard of it?

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Yeah, I guess.

SPEAKER_06 28:38

So that helped us survive. But we didn't. We tried to the meetings thing didn't work. So we've gotten really out of having regular meetings. Sure. So that's been challenging. I mean, we do do a training when people are brought on. And these people are so smart. They just catch it. So you know, my granddaughter, one of mine, is 10 now. Her favorite thing is to take orders. Don't re don't report me to PCS. I think you can do that if they're a family member, right? We can do it right here. You can do it everyone. It's got a special button. She loves it. She loves it. She'll say, Nana, you forgot to say thank you. Where's your customer service? And then I have a niece. They all want to come and work there. And so we close once and a summer camp came in and we do stations. They make salad wraps and different things. They have to identify all the veggies. Hard time with the daikon. That's the one they always forget. They're not sure what that is. And they, this generation, wanted to take orders, right? We're not open, so it's pretend. Right. Our controller calls us, something's wrong. You have a million dollars of orders rung up. Nice.

SPEAKER_05 29:49

Keep it coming. Keep it coming.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

They cash that and close the doors.

SPEAKER_06 29:57

1,600 noodle bowls, I just ordered.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Hey, and if I missed it, there's one little lingering thing.

Buying The Shop And Growing The Menu

SPEAKER_01 30:06

I'm I'm still in Davenport. I'm still in Wiener World. And and but I'm trying to think like when you decided we're gonna build a business here, the cuisine, the the idea of the name and the what between Wiener World, Davenport, and this is gonna be our restaurant, and Charlie clearly. Yeah. Like, how did you was it a sit-down meeting or where did you land on because it's very unique what you decided to do there at that time in Santa Cruz?

SPEAKER_06 30:32

So Charlie wasn't really an owner, he was the chef, sponsored. And uh he didn't stay very long. His wife at the time didn't like Santa Cruz, and so he had this great life. He moved to, I think it was North Carolina and he opened up three restaurants there. He's retired down, has a different partner, but they wanted my husband to to come in and run it. Gotcha. I'm tracking, okay. Yeah. And I went, no, we're buying it.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_06 31:01

And they went, it's yours here. So then I went through everything. Okay, that's it. See what the ingredients were like. Change certain things like the oil. I wasn't gonna use non-foaming agent peanut oil for cooking. I we went to rice bran oil, which is super high in vitamin P and we use very little oil anyway. We don't use much. Just all of that. And it was a very small menu. And we started expanding it. But what happens is once you expand, it was hard to take it away because people would like protest.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 31:36

No, the Chiang Mai, you can't try and take it away. No, there was like a big protest, Chiang Mai protest.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

But might be the first ever of its kind.

SPEAKER_06 31:47

But my husband at the time when he started, he would come in every day and just work with the cooks. Oh, yeah. Because he wanted to make sure the cooks felt comfortable and they were gonna stay. He'd he'd pull chicken, it'd help cook. You know, we start cooking at 6 30 in the morning. Well, we added faux, we didn't have faux, you know. And in fact, funny story. Do you have time for it?

SPEAKER_01 32:08

We got time.

SPEAKER_06 32:09

So we've traveled a lot internationally, and I certainly have when I was a hippie, traveled a lot. And it's that's when I learned about food. Like go to the Mediterranean, Asia. Oh, this is food. Okay, I get it.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 32:24

My tongue, my w taste were dancing and singing and happy. And but I didn't know how to cook yet, so I had to learn that. Yeah. It took some time. But so we would go over the hill to San Jose to buy supplies, right? And we got turned on to a lot of Vietnamese restaurants, which are really too. I didn't grow up with Vietnamese restaurants. There was one Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood.

SPEAKER_03 32:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 32:50

I grew up in, I'm originally from Brooklyn, but I really grew up in St. Louis, the summer of St.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Louis. Not a hot topic there.

SPEAKER_06 32:56

No. And I said, we have to do faux. Yeah. We have to bring it into the menu. And so I made it. And Andrea Nugent, I don't know if you know her, she's a Vietnamese cookbook writer. She's one of James Beards. She's wonderful. She has a great big following. Yeah, okay. And she's so kind. She came in to taste it. Uh-oh. Wow. So I'm like, here, taste it. And she goes, it's very delicious, but it's Jewish. I went, What? It's Jewish? My soup is Jewish? She says, Yes. I said, Why is it Jewish? Because it uses vegetables instead of herbs and spices. Oh, okay, so we'll change. It will convert. Yeah. So it converted to Vietnamese. And we actually won awards for it, which is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Yeah, there's no doubt. And it's just that's a that's a comfort food. And I we travel the world looking for a nice bowl.

SPEAKER_06 33:46

It's one of our number one. Oh, there's no doubt.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

I think it's, you know, Santa Cruz now is leveled up. There's a couple people doing it, but I think yours, yours stands right up there for it. Anything jumping your head, Ray?

SPEAKER_04 33:58

So do you prep somewhere else, or how do you get your restaurant? Yeah, it's a pretty small space.

SPEAKER_06 34:04

I think what is it, 500 square feet or something? It's insane. No, we don't.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

You do everything there.

Building Nutrition Into Every Choice

SPEAKER_06 34:11

Everything there.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

500 square feet's like the whole place.

SPEAKER_06 34:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Oh, it's tiny. Yeah. I was gonna say not the kitchen.

SPEAKER_06 34:16

So they use they and the reason I use the green onions because the green part of the onion is like taking a vitamin pill. And it's prehistoric. It's been around forever. It's so full of nutrition. That's and I and my vision is if you're gonna eat, let's get the most amount of nutrition out of your food. And that's why the Daikon Carrot marinated, the Daikon is super good for digestion. And so while I'm always thinking of these things and minimal sugar, like I took soda. So people love that soda we use boiling. Boiling was that? Yeah, which has cane sugar, not high fructose cancer. But when sand, and I've been trying to get rid of it, but people loved it. So when they had the sugar tax, they said, that's it. I had an employee quit because I took it off the menu. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Standing behind. That employee died on that hill.

SPEAKER_06 35:13

Actually. No, I just and I'm I'm sorry. You you can have your soda, but just not here.

SPEAKER_05 35:19

Yeah. So what kind of beverages do you serve now?

SPEAKER_06 35:22

One of our number ones, it's it's a ginger lemonade made from fresh ginger. Oh, yeah. Incredible. It's like one of our best-selling items out of everything. And now we make a uh hibiscus because it's super hard, really good for your heart and really good for your blood pressure, and full of antioxidant. Just when you look at the deep, deep purple color of it, you just know. And it's so it's relatively new, and our son came up with very low sugar. We used uh uh flowers, a hibiscus flour. It's really good.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

You're still doing the bon mi sandwiches, or no?

SPEAKER_06 35:53

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Those are that with the lemonade is is a go-to on like an on-the-go kind of meal that's really good. But still gonna go you know back one you know step here as far as so we've rewound it, and I'm always interested in like the human interest

Name Debates And The Reality Of Running It

SPEAKER_01 36:07

side of it. So you decide it, you change the menu, and then you own it, and you're often running any like the roller coaster of any like the high point, low point, any kind of like what did we get ourselves into, or was it just euphoria all the way through? So that's that's called the uh what's that word I'm looking for? That's uh what's the question where you know the answer to? Disappointment. Did you say a disappointment? Yeah, yeah. It's a terrible disappointment.

SPEAKER_06 36:36

So, first of all, we struggle with changing the name because we've been depending on who's going to school at UC Santa Cruz, Charlie Hong Kong, they consider it racist.

SPEAKER_03 36:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 36:48

But when they learn, Charlie's actually a real person, then we're like, oh.

SPEAKER_05 36:52

Yeah, yeah, that gets you a pass.

SPEAKER_06 36:53

And we've tried to change it and it just sticks. We have tried to change that name so many times over the years, and it just sticks. And our a lot of our Asian vendors would ask, oh, we love name. We love it. We love that name.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

Yeah, and it's it's I think there's there's a part of it where heart and intention gets past the you know, quote unquote cancel culture. But you know, we do consulting advice, and I'll give you a free one, you know, for a renaming. It it would be Wiener World. And that one's free because that would take off. No, so so the the that little part of it, but just overall, as far as like, because it's a dramatic thing. I think the thing about, and I don't know this uh from this side of it, feels like owning a restaurant is is is a big 24-7 on your mind. They're not there, kind of like, and I'm not even saying negative all the time, but it's it's ever present, right? A restaurant.

SPEAKER_06 37:46

Okay, so I am so passionate about providing nourishment that my heart always goes to, I'm providing nourishment. Okay, okay. But I do have to add something very important. My husband got Parkinson's, and when my husband got Parkinson's, it changed a lot.

SPEAKER_03 38:04

Okay.

Parkinson’s, Deep Brain Stimulation, And Love

SPEAKER_06 38:05

At first, because when you get a diagnosis like that, you're like, what does this mean? Yeah. And it changed. We might, I mean, people would come after us. We need to do a chain. And we've been through that a number of times. But ultimately, what would happen? First of all, because I'm the woman at the table, they would ignore me and they would didn't realize you better not ignore her. She's not someone you ignore.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

It's like Miranda.

unknown 38:33

True.

SPEAKER_06 38:35

Anyway, so that changed. And he stepped away for a while, just like, what does this mean? Where I'm but here's the thing. Because of diet, because of gratitude, because all these things that I've learned over the years, and he had a surgery called deep brain stimulation. So they go into the center of your brain, there's a wire down your neck, you have a little battery that sends electrical charges and no shaking. When was it? What time frame is that he had that about 15 years ago. Okay. And he just had a fourth one put, and and then at a certain point when he realized I can let because before he had to take all this medication, had really bad side effects, and he tremored, and it was really, really challenging for him. And for, you know, when something like this happens in your life, but learning to live with it and learning to understand it from a standpoint of what does it mean to have a body and how do you work with it. And we discovered you can create dopamine through love, through dancing. We dance in our kitchen. I can see the dopamine is what you don't have with Parkinson coming in. I tell my granddaughters, seven and and nine at the time, Grandpa pop-up doesn't have a special chemical that makes him happy. But love, he can create it. They run across the room. We love you, pop-up, we love you, pop-up. I can see the delight. Wow, wow. That's amazing. And that to me is what Charlie Hong Kong represents. Wow. For me, an opportunity. I have this information, why not share it?

SPEAKER_01 40:13

There's no doubt.

SPEAKER_06 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

And there's science behind that too. I think science is catching up with the Parkinson's as far as it's more leaning into Parkinson's with movement, with dance, with exercise, and things like that. That it you're right. That that love and staying connected. Gratitude. Gratitude, but but there's there's, you know, for our friends and families that have, you know, that are going through it, like leaning into Parkinson's with some of those, uh, you know, I guess a better lack of better term, like loving PT for yourself and doing some different things stimulates different parts of your brain that that do help balance it.

SPEAKER_06 40:47

I learned so there are certain side effects you don't know whether they're Parkinson's. He was getting sick every single night months. And he went to the doctor, and the doctor said, Oh, you have something called gastroparesis. Take this med. And I went, you better call your neurologist first. They said, Don't take that med. This is Parkinson's, and I knew immediately how to heal it, I have to say. Before, well, my husband, let's put it this way, chewing was sort of a secondary thing with him, and he'd eat really fast. Yeah. Like a lot of Oh, gotcha. A lot of, should I say men say do? Is there a way to say that? Very fair. Very fair. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

You've got a long runway with that. There's like hundreds of years left with that one. You're fine.

SPEAKER_06 41:30

Okay. But what happened, so before we eat, every single, because I cook, I I go to the farmer's market, I get all my food. I'm I hardly ever eat out. I love cooking. I love it. I'm connected to the earth and I'm layering food and creating all this wonderfulness. I just love cooking. And so we sit down, we look into each other's eyes, create the love hormone, oxytocin, you know, like when mommy and baby at the breast. That's oxytocin. And then we express our gratitude for the farmers for this beautiful food, and may it deeply, deeply nourish us. Hasn't been sick and over.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Wait a minute. It wasn't eating slower, it was love again. It was love.

SPEAKER_05 42:12

Love healed.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

I thought for sure I was gonna be eating slower. I thought she healed it with but it but it's love times two now. Well, so what does how far have you taken this love concept?

SPEAKER_06 42:23

Well, I have this tendency to talk to everyone because I have I no, really, I have deep, deep affection for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 42:33

And my foundation is love.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

I love that. And I think there's a thing we talk about all the time on this podcast, but it vibes in a lot of the narrative and stuff. I think that sort of mindset leads to increasing your ability to have empathy with other people. I think if you have like an open heart that way and you have more conversations, it broadens your scope. And if you have empathy, you can kind of widen your perspective. And if you change your perspective, people don't feel as far away. The world doesn't feel, you know, quite as as overwhelming as it may feel. But I think that leads to one question as we kind of look at it is that, you know, as you're looking at it, you know, you're more 17 than you are coming up on 81, you said. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the the the vibe is very much like, you know, youthful from you. And I think that that's it's really you know impressive as far as you know, I'm feeling bad about my energy right now. But it's but I think I think is as you know, the the question I have right now is like, what's your take at 80, owning a business, being through you know, generations of Santa Cruz, seeing these kids, like you said, come in, eating the butter noodles, and then coming in with their kids. Are you optimistic, pessimistic? Like, what's your kind of like feel right now about you know the planet, these kids coming up?

SPEAKER_06 43:51

Um, well, I have to tell you, so I feel very strongly that.

Kindness, Meditation, And Choosing Joy

SPEAKER_06 44:00

It's because of the kindness of people we all have our lives. I've traveled a lot. I have a bathroom with a toilet. Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_03 44:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 44:09

I have water. I have electricity. That's because of people I don't see are providing all that. And all everything, if when my family gets together and we eat, I always say, Who are all the invisible people that are at the table?

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Great line. Wow. It's a great line.

SPEAKER_06 44:26

Let's name them.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 44:28

And what was something kind you saw this week? Or something kind you did. So when I'm driving to go to Charlie Hong Kong and I see someone all day long making me safe by holding a sign, slow down because there's construction, my heart just goes out to them. Thank you for doing that.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

It's called the Grateful Flow. And the Grateful Flow is something that I think the psychiatrist that talks about is Phil Stutz, I think. And he doesn't own the name of it, but it's it's one where if you're feeling stuck or if you're feeling sort of winding down, but he suggests you do this thing, which is just a uh as long as you can last. Said sometimes it could be 10 seconds, sometimes it could be five minutes, but you think of only the things you're grateful for. Like and like and just barf it out. It doesn't have to be out loud. You just keep going in your head, whether you're wherever you are, it's like I'm terrible at it. You know, I think my record's 17 seconds before I start thinking about bills that I owe and things like that. That's okay. I totally I'm trying to be okay with it because I think as long as you're kind of intentional about it and you're you're you're doing your part meditations the same way. But what you're talking about is the grateful flow, and you know, and then it puts you in a clear headspace. If you just even get six or seven or eight out in 15 seconds, you're like, I do love my kids. I do love Santa Cruz. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow, you know, little things like that, like the small things that we don't say out loud to ourselves enough.

SPEAKER_06 45:52

So I do a lot of cooking and a lot of feeding of people at my house, and I'll go, am I gonna complain about the dishes? Or I have a dishwasher. Is that amazing? I have a washing machine. Like feeding in a jet screen. I make my bed every day. I have a bet I I literally intentionally will turn towards Gratic, but I have to show you this. My 10-year-old granddaughter drew this, and she said, Nana, I want to start an organization. And the organization, you don't have to pay money to join, but you have to agree that you're going to express kindness and love in the world. And that do you see it's a it's the world with a band aid with a heart. And that's and that's and she's 10.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

When he says heal the world.

SPEAKER_06 46:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

I'm in. I mean, come on, just tell me where the tell me what the dues are.

SPEAKER_06 46:51

She said we're not going to charge money, maybe occasionally, if we need to get money to donate to the farm workers or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

That's just that's just incredible. Jerry, can we put a deal together for that? Let's do it. Heal the world.

SPEAKER_06 47:05

We want to stick her so people can ha say they're members of Heal the World. But this says a lot about your love, how it exists.org.

SPEAKER_05 47:22

No, it says a lot about the love that you spread, that it's just so infectious that your grandkids pick it up, right? Like this is it's generational, you know. I think that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Well, this room picked it up. Yeah, definitely. I don't know. You know, you just feel that kind of thing, like it's like, again, we you and I know you clearly well, I you know, I always ask these questions because I think it's it's fair because a lot of times I always think of the other side of it. Somebody listening to this going like, oh God, she's got so much energy, so much love, everything's okay for her. How do you in the in those everybody has bad moments, you know, whatever may be. How do you get out of a bad moment? Because I clearly have seen this side of it. Is it some semblance of what you just told us for you to pull yourself out of like a negative thought process? How do you do that?

SPEAKER_06 48:09

Well, I've been a meditator for over 50 years, very serious meditator, and it's made a big difference because I wasn't always I mean, I've always been energetic and I've always been just love people and would organize neighborhood kids. Let's have a play. You know, I was that kid.

SPEAKER_03 48:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 48:30

And I was the kid who I never believed in I meanness never can't. I I would I was okay with the nose picker.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no, and I think as far as that one goes, it's like, and I guess it like it's a it's a credit somewhere to your own path you found, your parents possibly, or influences. I call them tethers in our life that kind of keep us, you know, grounded or kind of, you know, and there's always some credit that goes up and you know, because it trickles down and then we live over.

SPEAKER_06 48:58

Parents were amazing.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:01

Very, very progressive and very active in their progression. And my house was filled with kids all the time. They ate all our food. I don't know my hand how my parents put up with this.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

But I'm guessing, I mean, if I'm my ballparking, right, your parents would have been born in the teens or the twenties. Yeah, 20s. Yeah, and so hard to find progressives born in, you know, so that means that when they're raising you, you know, that means it's it's not the most progressive time to be progressive for your parents, is what I'm saying. It's hard to do that. It wouldn't have been the end thing to do.

SPEAKER_06 49:32

They I asked, and I didn't know my mother was very extraordinary because she had a lot of tragedy and she lost her mother at six, lost my dad, she was 42 with a 13-year-old. And she did not lead with grief or anxiety or hurt. She always I said, I won't she moved out here when she was 85 and she lived till 95. She lived at Dominican Oaks. She had so much fun. She had so much fun there. And I say, Mom, you're always so happy. How do you do it? She said, It's a choice. I choose it every day.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

I'm asking you one of our deep questions because I feel like you're hip for it. Like, I don't usually on our other podcasts we kind of go into spinning, but I think I think I know the answer to this, but it might be qualified. Like at 80 right now, as you're kind of going through these conversations, not this conversation, but overall, it's like, what do you think this little quick little journey we're on here is about? Like this little tiny time we have on this planet, this little expression that we have as ourselves, what is this about?

SPEAKER_06 50:34

For me, yeah, I wake up in the morning, I go, I'm awake. I open the doors, I step outside, I go like this. I'm awake, I want to be useful. I want to do something useful today. And I think that's our journey here. It's not, I mean, it's not all about me. I mean, there are times, you know, like I'm not I'm not this enough, I'm not that enough, I'm not, and then finally it all just dropped away.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

Yeah, that's a nice recalibration.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

Yeah, never thought about it that way.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

Well, I mean, it's it's there's there's little fundamental, and you never know when it's coming in your life where you hear a story or you see a you know, small little something in a magazine or a conversation like this, and 30 years later you're at a wedding, you're saying, like, there's a speech one time, this hospice nurse told me, because when you get to this age, you're like, you realize there's these little tiny chapters of your life, and then there's these small little glowing moments, you're like, oh, that was a fundamental shift in my life. And I I shifted my perspective that day, that conversation. Everything else kind of was chaos and moved around me, but that didn't change. That that locked in that I was gonna kind of think about life and death that way, and you don't know where it's gonna come from, but that kind of nugget, the earlier the better. You know, the earlier you can get that perspective, the better.

SPEAKER_06 51:49

I do want to add, I'm privileged. I was born into privilege, and my feeling, and this is a feeling of my family, because you are privileged, you have a certain level of responsibility, because you can. I'm not in survival mode, right? So, and that's why I have compassion. You you don't know what somebody's going through or what they went through just to get up and go to school, or you know, that's why I have so much, I have so much respect for Dick Peugeot of Lakeside Organic, how he treats his field workers who every day he goes out in that field and greets them.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

That's your partner the whole time, pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, they're great.

SPEAKER_05 52:31

That's a great family.

SPEAKER_06 52:32

They're so he's so kind and so wonderful, and he treats his workers so well. He has a store where they can buy everything. And I was looking through some a box of stuff I have for kids at Charlie when we have kids there, and I was searching for a mag books. I I love books as a teacher for kids. And I wanted a book about farm workers, could not find it, could not find it. And finally, through a bunch of calling around, I found this book and I was rereading it, and it's a beautiful book. This young girl whose family are field workers and they go from farm to farm to farm. And it's maybe for about a fourth or fifth grade level, sixth grade level. Just beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_06 53:18

How she has to adjust and and finding the special things, special trees or special plants in the because she's moving a lot, but she's with her family.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

And it's beautiful. It's it's your place and you've been there forever.

Favorite Orders And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_01 53:34

Is anything wear down on you? What's your favorite dish there? Do you have one that you still go in and like that's your chance? Well, you mean the time of year?

SPEAKER_06 53:41

No, just the year.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

Okay, 2026.

SPEAKER_06 53:43

Right now I'm really into the a sandwich as a rice bowl. Wait, what? So during COVID, we couldn't get bread. Okay. And so we stopped offering the bomb means. But I had it with rice because I love the veganies. Yes, for sure. And it's got mint and salon.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

I all the goodies, all the popping fresh goodies.

SPEAKER_06 54:06

I'm a plant person myself personally. Yeah. And have been for when I came here and just I always say this. When I discovered that it's soil, it's soil that makes the the nutrition in the plant. And I'll say soil's my first love, and my husband's okay with that.

SPEAKER_01 54:27

Love it. Well, Karina, you want to wrap us up? I think we're out, unless there's any follow-ups.

SPEAKER_04 54:32

My favorite is the uh salad wraps. Salad wraps with a peanut for sure. Oh my god. There's no doubt. That's the best.

SPEAKER_01 54:38

Boring, it's spicy dance for me. You know, but there's different variations, different ways you can get it. I know that. You know, actually, if you sit on air right now, Ainsley, say hello to Ainsley in the faraway place. Just say hi, Ainsley, right now. You say and tell your dad to get you some spicy dance.

SPEAKER_06 54:53

Ainsley, I'm gonna make sure your dad gets you some spicy dance.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yeah, that's that's just done.

SPEAKER_06 54:58

It's like you may have to say those noodles are made fresh.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

Oh, we know I know the whole story. She's grilled your employee. She knows she knows the whole story there.

SPEAKER_06 55:07

Good in the mouth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

That was fantastic. Karina, swing us around.

SPEAKER_04 55:11

I just want to say congratulations on being iconic Santa Cruz. Like there's the bagelry. There's 100%. Marianne's ice cream. There's just iconic places in Santa Cruz, and Charlie Hong Kong's definitely is at that pedestal. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

Iconic Santa Cruz. And that's that's not easy to do in this. No, it's not. And that it's really a badge of honor, and especially since it just started in a field in Davenport. And you still have a line, right? Still a line.

SPEAKER_06 55:35

There's always a line.

SPEAKER_01 55:36

Always a line.

SPEAKER_06 55:37

But I have to say, because I respond to every response that people write, not everybody is always happy. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Yeah, of course. But then that's a that's a perfect way as a business owner to do it. It's just again, it goes back to it seems like your core philosophy, which is engaging. Yeah. Engaging humans. So yeah.

SPEAKER_06 55:53

We're a fan, and if we can think of ourselves as a family, like my granddaughter's 10-year-old, the one who made that picture of the world at peace, uh, Nana, why do you talk to everyone? I said, I do it with intention. I do it from my heart. And if I speak, even if they're different, they might not think like me. It's how we create peace, one interaction at a time.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 56:17

I love it that you're intentional. Intentional takes work. You have to shift your mind. Even talking about the culture that you brought somebody in to help you guys with culture. Yeah. You have to be intentional about stuff.

SPEAKER_01 56:28

Yeah. And there's there's that part we talk about empathy, you talk about transparency, you talk about vulnerability. And vulnerability, all these different words lead you towards being vulnerable enough to know that you might not have all the answers, bring somebody in so there's a different voice talking about the same message. But it's, you know, it's it's it's a really good model.

SPEAKER_06 56:46

And the thing too is because we are supplying the livelihood for our cooks and our front-of-the-house people. So it's really important for us to keep going.

SPEAKER_01 56:58

How many do you employ over there? Ish?

SPEAKER_06 57:00

Around 30.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

That's amazing. Right now. It's just such a such an institution, such a gift, like Ryan said. And then on top of that, you've got little, you know, champions going out there, employees saying good things about your business. It's the secret sauce. A lot of employees clock out and they don't have a word to say about where they're working, but you've got a lot of people out there saying good things.

SPEAKER_06 57:19

Thank you so much. Absolutely legendary.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

Well, social media manager, uh, just in case, like, how do we get a hold of Charlie Hong Kong's? How do we basically, you know, do we follow or website, all that fun stuff?

SPEAKER_00 57:30

Yeah, we're Charlie Hong Kong Santa Cruz on Instagram. Check us out. You can look us up on Google. We have Google reviews. We have our own website. Their website is quite amazing. It is. You made that yourself. Good job.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

You did?

SPEAKER_00 57:43

She did. With help.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

Nice job.

SPEAKER_00 57:46

Take the credit. Ryan.

SPEAKER_04 57:49

Yep, Ryan Buckpold, Cross Country Mortgage. My sell eight three one eight one eight two three three nine.

SPEAKER_05 57:56

Jerry Seagraves with Seagraves Insurance, 831 239 9425.

SPEAKER_01 58:01

And I'm not here.

SPEAKER_05 58:02

Yeah.